No matter what time it is wake me even if it's in the middle of a Cabinet meeting.

If I could write a story that would do for the Indian one-hundredth part what 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' did for the Negro I would be thankful the rest of my life.

IT is mere coincidence that Cooper was born in the year which produced The Power of Sympathy and that when he died Uncle Tom's Cabin was passing through its serial stage and yet the limits of his life mark almost exactly the first great period of American fiction.

The rules have changed. True power is held by the person who possesses the largest bookshelf not gun cabinet or wallet.

In politics the number of women in the cabinet has fallen and if current poll trends continue and Labour loses a number of marginal seats the number of female MPs is likely to drop significantly.

When a Cabinet Minister who is sacked for telling lies is re-appointed in the face of every constitutional convention only for the same man to be sacked again from the same Cabinet for the same offence by the same Prime Minister no wonder the public are cynical about politics.

I say that to my colleagues by the way in the internal Cabinet meetings I say 'Look I want to be very clear about what I want.' I just - I don't want a peace process I want a peace result.

I had daydreams and fantasies when I was growing up. I always wanted to live in a log cabin at the foot of a mountain. I would ride my horse to town and pick up provisions. Then return to the cabin with a big open fire a record player and peace.

That's what keeps me up at three in the morning: Who's looking at reviews of Cabin Boy right now?

But to the slave mother New Year's day comes laden with peculiar sorrows. She sits on her cold cabin floor watching the children who may all be torn from her the next morning and often does she wish that she and they might die before the day dawns.